Eye on the Storm

I’m scheduled to fly to Bali and Singapore in 11 days. I’ve been anxious about the trip for the past two weeks and every good day is followed by a bad day. From thinking the virus would be contained to learning about its spread to Shanghai to discovering that masks aren’t sufficient protection on a five to fifteen hour flight out of Shanghai. All these reasons have made me rethink the trip and look into getting a refund. I’m taking the next few days to evaluate the situation, ensure I can get reimbursed for the trip before I decide to call it quits.

Monitoring the coronavirus closely than anything I’ve monitored before caused me to realize how little coverage we give things that don’t immediately affect us in Toronto. I think cities in North America operate in a bubble and until that bubble burst and their safety is impacted, they either don’t care, joke about the issue or don’t even know about it.

I admit that I wouldn’t know much about the coronavirus had I not had this scheduled upcoming trip, and the amount of searching I had to do for informational sources in Asia because barely anyone outside of China was covering the topic. Social media was filled with memes of the outbreak and non-Asian outlets covered it as an international topic.

It made me realize the way we report news can impact how we come to value events and vice versa.

As I began to watch what was happening in China, the city of Wuhan and then more cities got put on lockdown. I didn’t know how to feel. As a soon-to-be traveller, I wanted the spread contained and the health issues resolved. But, as a human reading about the citizens in Wuhan, I began to wonder how scared they probably felt. If I was terrified of contracting something I might catch on a plane if someone from Wuhan or in contact with someone from Wuhan was on my flight, imagine how they feel being locked down in the epicentre of the outbreak where one has to be vigilant of every single person and surface around you.

My lesson from this past week of monitoring the news was learning to break barriers and care about what’s going on in other countries. It seems to be 2020’s theme so far, the flight that was hit, the Australian bushfires, the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, these are all issues bigger than our day-to-day lives that affect us all in some shape and form and we can immediately see, yet I feel we all need to wake up and become more aware of issues happening in other parts of the world because those parts aren’t actually that far away. It’s all on the same planet – Earth.

From civilians becoming collateral damage due to political forces, to climate change taking a harsher toll to health scares crossing borders, I think we need to treat these as if they are happening in our own backyards, because they are – and that backyard is Earth. Canadian were on that plane, climate change is affecting Canada and the coronavirus has landed in Canada and will become prevalent here as more China-Canada travel and international travel, for that matter, continues.

It feels senseless to scroll social media and watch memes of all these issues but it feels even sillier to go on social channels today and see posts about how to rock a bodysuit, or discover the trending red carpet outfits, or criticizing someone for a room for of hair extensions. What are we focusing on while our fellow humans are suffering?!

The perspective shift was a lot to digest because had I not been going on this trip or monitoring the situation hourly, I would’ve continued enjoying my daily scroll of poses by the pool, #ootds and other mundane crap.

I’m unsure if we focus on the simpler pleasure in life because we feel helpless to assist global concerns or if we simply are a generation who doesn’t care unless it’s in our immediate backyard.

More needs to be done to close the gap in feeling so distant from global concerns. Making it easier to show the direct impact, and present direct actions as part of the solution, such as sending donations to the bushfires, can be replicated by sending medical supplies to China. But we don’t seem to work that way. Help isn’t the first thing we put out there. Fear and humor seem to be our way of dealing with things. If only memes could save the day.

Update: February 29, 2020: There’s been an increase in media reporting due to economic systems being affects. However, due to my intense monitoring of the situation in mid to later January and early February, my Google notifications and interests setting now show me all regional and international outlets covering the coronavirus. So while I may think reporting has increased, it could be due to my settings and interests. Canada has started covering more stories, not near the amount covered in Asian countries, which is understandable to some extent, but more service-oriented pieces would be a welcomed approach.